


No One Knows The Truth

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Foxtrot [109]
Category: Dollhouse, Stargate Atlantis, Stargate SG-1
Genre: AU, Crossover, Dollhouse-level non-con, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 18:58:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6717145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: <i>Stargate Multiverse, Any, Under scrutiny in the press/public eye.</i></p><p>John comes face to face with a different kind of Dollhouse victim. Post-series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No One Knows The Truth

“What kind of green beans did you want again?” John had his cell phone tucked between his ear and shoulder while he tried to wrangle Evan’s hastily-scrawled shopping list (with last-minute additions from Jennifer and Rodney) and the shopping cart.  
  
“What do you mean, what kind? Green beans are green beans.” Evan sounded distracted.  
  
“This is Earth. They have five hundred more options than they need. Dozens of brands. French cut? Low sodium? Give me some guidance here.”  
  
“Cheapest brand is fine. Um...Jennifer says low sodium, for Rodney’s blood pressure. And sure - French cut is fine. Gotta go.” Evan hung up.  
  
John sighed and went to pocket his cell phone, and someone grabbed his shoulder.  
  
“You _bastard._ ” The woman was tall, blonde, would have been lovely but for the fury marring her expression.  
  
John had never seen her before in his life. “Ma’am,” he began.  
  
She spat in his face.  
  
John reared back, shocked.  
  
“You’re a monster and a freak. You destroyed my marriage and my family!” The woman’s voice shook.  
  
John lifted a hand to his face, wiped it clean. “Ma’am, I don’t know what you’re talking about.” He flipped open his cell phone, hit the speed dial for Harriman at the Mountain. Other shoppers paused to stare, wide-eyed.  
  
The woman reached into her purse and drew out a photo of -  
  
Silas, the UN diplomat who’d bought Foxtrot as a toy and also as a translator. John rocked back on his heels, flooded with memories, and the woman took advantage of his distraction to scream at him further, about how his sick, twisted hold over her husband had bankrupted her family and ruined their lives and now they were laughingstocks and disgraces.  
  
A tinny voice emitted from John’s phone, Harriman, asking if he was all right, what was going on.  
  
John took a deep breath, forced his hands to stop shaking. The imprints crowded around him, ready to jump in at any moment and offer assistance. No. He had to handle this himself. “Ma’am,” he said, keeping his voice low and steady, “I didn’t seduce your husband.”  
  
“I read the trial transcripts,” she hissed. “I heard every filthy thing you did to him. You _tricked_ him. He didn’t deserve to go to prison. He was confused -”  
  
“He bought me,” John said in a low voice, “and he used me, against my will.”  
  
“You were a _whore._ ”  
  
All of the imprints flinched. The bystanders flinched. Some looked away. Some shook their heads and walked away.  
  
“You have a teenage daughter, don’t you?” Translator remembered that much. “If someone kidnapped her, brainwashed her, and then put her in a cell for strange men to come by and purchase her, have their way with her, wouldn’t you want those men to go to prison?”  
  
The woman scoffed. “Of course I would. But that wasn’t what you were. You were -”  
  
“How do you know what I was, what I am?” John asked.  
  
“I saw -”  
  
“What, television shows, news stories, interviews? Read gossip on the internet?”  
  
_Easy, John,_ Hostage Negotiator said.  
  
_Let her have it,_ Traci spat.  
  
The woman spat at him again. “You and everyone else like you, those _dolls_ , you were all high-priced whores, but whores all the same.”  
  
“If not for this man, you and everyone on this planet would be toast,” someone else said. John spun, and there was Daniel Jackson, wearing his BDUs and glasses and looking dangerously harmless, with his hands in his pockets and that glint in his eye.  
  
“Literally food, not just burnt to death,” Daniel amended. He nodded at John. “Harriman dispatched me. I was in the area. Emergency post-it run. You know those physicists - can’t save the world without their sticky notes.”  
  
The woman swallowed hard, because here was Daniel Jackson, media darling, the genius with a tragic childhood who’d unlocked the Stargate and proved to the world that he was right all along - aliens really did build the pyramids.  
  
“So if you’re done harassing a national - nay, international, or dare I suggest, intergalactic hero, you should be on your way.”  
  
The woman stared at him.  
  
Daniel fluttered his fingers at her in dismissal, then commandeered John’s shopping cart and started wheeling it away from the green beans.  
  
“No way they’d send you on a sticky-note run,” John said. “But thanks.” 

“You’re welcome. And they would, if it meant Jack and I stopped arguing for ten minutes. But you’re right - not today. Harriman got your message, and they beamed me right to you. So let’s finish this shopping and get you home without further incident, all right?”

For the rest of the trip to the grocery store, they were undisturbed, although John could feel everyone staring at them.

Daniel seemed completely uncaring of the fact that his face was on the cover of more than one magazine at the check-out stand, and instead made a running commentary on the contents of John’s shopping cart.

“Low sodium green beans? Really?”

“Doctor’s orders. Jennifer’s, not Rodney’s.”

“Green bean casserole?”

“For the annual ‘you’re going to miss Thanksgiving’ pre-Atlantis departure dinner.”

“Who’s cooking?”

“Evan, mostly.”

“Can I invite myself?”

“I think you earned an invite after today.”

“I know how much you soldiers dislike being called heroes - though you’re pretty free with calling each other heroes.”

“In this instance, I think there’s a Firefly joke to be made.”

“Ah, yes. Next time I’ll be sure to say _big damn heroes_.”

“I’m hoping there won’t be a next time.”

“There will be, trust me. I caught some reporters going through my trash this morning.”

“Did they find anything interesting?”

“Only what happens to the contents of a man’s refrigerator when the base is on lockdown for a week following an off-world mission that was supposed to last four hours and instead lasted three days.”

“The glamours of gate travel. No one knows the truth.”

“The truth was holding elections in a carton of sour cream.”

“That’s some pretty evolved bacteria.”

“I almost called the SGC for a containment unit. Don’t want to be growing the next intergalactic threat in my fridge.”

“Nope, wouldn’t want that,” John said.

They made it to the car without much incident - a boy asked Daniel for an autograph - and once John was behind the wheel, he felt like he could finally breathe.


End file.
